By ADETOLA BADEMOSI, Abuja

Oil workers attached to the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources in Abuja have embarked on a three-day warning strike over non-payment of their salaries in the last three months.

The protesters under the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN) said the strike became imperative as they were being compelled to enrol into the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS).

According to them, there were no proven indications that the IPPIS could handle the peculiarities of the environment where they work.

Speaking on the development, the Association’s National Public Relations Officer (PRO), Mr Fortune Obi, said apart from being insecure, the payment platform had failed to consider the difference between regular civil servants and oil workers.

His words: “It is a three-day warning strike by members in the government regulatory agencies under the Ministry of Petroleum, basically because of their inclusion in the IPPIS system which we have rejected ab initio due to the various challenges we have had with it and the associated inefficiencies.

“PENGASSAN resolved about the system long ago. We want assurance that this system is robust enough to handle the challenges. We are saying we work in a peculiar sector where our members earn some allowances different from the civil service structure.

“Therefore, lumping us into that platform without capturing the peculiarities is unacceptable. Because of that, for the past three months, our members in these agencies have not been paid their salaries.”

He argued that oil workers render peculiar services and as such should not be joined with civil servants’ structure.

“We have said clearly that we work in a peculiar environment where earned allowances are different from the civil service payment system. In the civil service, they don’t work offshore, they don’t work in tank farms, they don’t work in haulage system. So, for personnel from the peculiar agencies, there are earned allowances. These are not captured in the IPPIS system.

“We need the guarantee that this system is robust enough to capture these issues, you can’t just go and implement something on a platform that is generally for civil servants and their structure. They must consider us as peculiar operators within the system,” he explained.

He said members would prefer the payment system which is domiciled with the Accountant General stressing that: “What the IOCs do is to book it into their system. We need the assurances, otherwise leave us where we are currently because that same application we are using currently is domiciled with the Accountant General, so why the change to a system that’s not reliable?”

To this end, he said that if their demand was not met in three days, the issue would be nationalised.

The protesters were drawn from the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF), Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF), Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NNRA) among others.

President Muhammadu Buhari, in 2019 had ordered that any Federal Government worker not captured on the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) by October 31 should not be paid his monthly salary. (Nigerian Tribune)

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